


Straw Men

by Parhelion



Category: Nero Wolfe - Stout
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Missing Scene, Wet & Messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-13
Updated: 2009-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in Montenegro, Archie finds Wolfe can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Straw Men

**Author's Note:**

> As you might expect, this story contains SERIOUS SPOILERS for _Black Mountain_.

We were on our way to deal with some murderers, but we weren't there yet. In the meantime, I was following my boss, Nero Wolfe, through the pitch dark of a moonless Montenegrin night.

So far, no problem. As bodyguard, secretary, and leg man to New York's best private detective, I was fine with our hiking. What I was not fine with was trailing Wolfe along ten miles of faint mountain trails that he knew and I didn't. Most times, the fat genius stays parked in his custom-built chair behind the mahogany desk in his office, content to have me drag witnesses and suspects back home so that he can glare at them. This time, our suspects had been rude enough to lair up in Wolfe's native country where I couldn't get to them.

Wolfe believed he could get to them, and this hike was part of his attempt. Seeing as how I didn't even speak the local language, I suppose I should have been grateful he was letting me tag along. But I wasn't trying for reasonable. Instead I was sticking to annoyed since I didn't want to feel anything more complex than irritation right now. Wolfe had been badly enough hurt by these particular murders that the wrong emotions would only have caused more damage. If he had spotted anything like pity on my face or in my voice these past weeks, he might have fired me, and I wouldn't have blamed him.

At least we were on the level now, heading along the valley of the Moracha. That meant Wolfe had stopped stumbling. Unlike everyone else who hiked, he only stumbled going uphill. He had also stopped grunting in the muffled way that made me want to tell him to pipe down and park on a boulder until I could fetch him something soothing, like a beer. But, given that we were in the communist Yugoslavia of 1953, I suspected my opportunities to buy beer would be limited.

To distract myself from all this drama, I had been mentally editing our trip into something I could write up as one of my case reports. How deeply Wolfe had been gored by the death of his oldest friend, Marko Vukcic, wasn't something he needed shared. Exactly why Marko's death had hit him so hard also wasn't anything I'd publicize. But, if we both survived, he would want it known that his revenges were so relentless and thorough that no one should ever try going after an intimate of his again. Pasting together surface details -- although not all of them -- would make for a tale good enough to be published but not good enough to breach either Wolfe's privacy or my own.

He interrupted my thoughts, his voice low and pitched to not carry. "Cart ruts. We should have reached the fields."

Not far off, I heard what must be a farm dog barking, confirming whatever memories Wolfe was using to navigate. Now the plan was for us to hole up in some haystack and wait for morning, when we could try our cover story on the locals in order to hitch a ride toward Rijeka, the closest thing to a village around here. I thought it was a better bet that some farmer would turn us in to the nearest commissar as capitalist haystack saboteurs, but Wolfe knew these people and I didn't. We'd do this his way.

More wandering around in the dark and some careful use of the flashlight, and I found what we were looking for. The haystack had a different shape than those I'd used for socializing back during my summers on the farm in Ohio, but it would have to do. Circling around to the side away from the road, I knelt and pulled out handfuls of hay to scoop out a niche for myself. After dumping my knapsack into my accommodations, I scooped out another niche for Wolfe. Then I asked him, "Do you wish to eat before going to your room?"

"No." He was grim. "I'm too far gone."

"A bite of chocolate would make a new man of you."

"No." He fumbled around for maybe half a minute before he added, "I need help. I can't feel my feet."

I heaved myself up and helped him off with his knapsack. "I'll take your shoes off."

"Confound it, no! I'd never get them on again. I'm dead below the knees. They might as well be missing."

"They're still on your ankles. Believe you me, I heard plenty of evidence of that along the way, especially going uphill."

"I ache all over except for them. Something must have interfered with the blood flow. This could be the onset of gangrene." He was in pain and had nothing to do right now except try to sleep, so he was papering over the grim determination of recent days with petulance. Too bad I had chosen annoyance for my own distraction of choice.

Given that we were stuck together in Yugoslavia, a worker's socialist paradise, I couldn't quit my job. What a pity. I knew his tone well. He was not to be persuaded by my flirtations with logic. That was why, short tempered, I made my mistake. I flicked on the flashlight for a couple of seconds. "See? Feet."

I wasn't an idiot. The beam was pointed down at the ground and the base of the haystack. But its illumination was enough, once my eyes adjusted, to give me a clear glimpse of Wolfe.

He was a mess in his mismatched hiking clothes, sweaty and dusted with hay from his failed attempt to get into bed. I even saw the beard stubble on his face that highlighted an expression too focused and stark for the complaints he kept making. If I hadn't been so busy not complicating my feelings, I might have guessed what the effect of this sight would be on me. Instead, I was taken by surprise.

Flicking off the flashlight, I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. He was still complaining about his feet, his words a low rumble that I couldn't sort out over my own pulse pounding in my ears.

Nero Wolfe is always perfectly dressed, barricaded behind fine wool and finer silk tailored so well that even I can't criticize. He bathes every day, using enough scented soap to mask any accidental sweat and not a sud more. His thick brown hair is kept cut and brushed, his fingernails are spotlessly clean. He shaves closely, precisely. He won't even keep on a tie that's developed a stain, a picky habit that once led to a murder. On one of those rare occasions when I was forced into introspection by being stuck in bed after meeting a bullet and then running out of magazines, I decided that all this nattiness is one more wall between him and the messy world outside the brownstone that he works so hard to avoid.

The big, shabby man I'd just glimpsed was a Nero Wolfe I rarely saw: rumpled, dirty, sweaty, and wide open. He was also the Wolfe I'd seen back after I was lung shot, the one who'd snuck around undercover to catch a criminal mastermind, the guy I'd first met years ago when he hired me to do something illegal after his weeks of nightmares. Too bad my raw reaction to this particular Wolfe was a big problem while traveling through a country full of people who wanted to kill us both.

"Are you well?" he asked, the petulance gone from his voice.

"Give me a second."

He did. But he also must have shifted his stance because he let out some air from between clenched teeth.

Wolfe isn't stoic. But he is determined. My habit is to concentrate on the missing stoicism and all the unneeded drama that leads to. I try never to think about his determination and what fuels it, those emotions whose existence I more than suspect. I even preferred this sudden, stupid clamor from my body to fishing up feelings that might net me in my turn, ones that had already entangled me enough to drag me along to a haystack somewhere below the Black Mountain of Montenegro.

"Archie." He said my name in a murmur that sounded about two-thirds as dark as the night around us. Then Wolfe followed up by grasping my shoulder, a gesture that was his mistake. Maybe he was worried. I didn't care. This close, I could smell him, his sweat sharp and familiar from the times before, the ones we never, ever discussed. Heat was crawling in my belly, ready to coil, about to strike.

Reaching out blindly, I found the thick softness of his hair. Somehow he'd gotten hay into it, prickling against my fingertips. I carded out some of the straw. He froze like a stag sensing a threat.

"I remember liking haystacks," I said.

Wolfe didn't reply. I could hear him breathing as noisily as if we were still hiking.

"Nostalgia. Come to think of it, you should do whatever it takes to sleep, considering the feet problem. I still don't speak enough local lingo to wrangle a ride, and you're too big for piggy-back."

I guess that was enough of a verbal runaround to let him know I wouldn't say anything I shouldn't, especially at a time like this. We both knew there was a danger always closer to us than a bunch of hostile Reds or renegade murderers.

"Prattle," he said at last, and kissed me. I didn't bother arguing. I was too busy with the fly buttons of those shabby dark blue trousers he had on.

I've enjoyed my sport in some less-than-ideal settings, but swapping fast hand-jobs with Wolfe next to a haystack in hostile countryside has to take some sort of prize for crazy. I didn't care. I was hard when he got me free and found I was making a noise as my hips thrust me further into his firm and dusty grip.

Sore knees, sore legs, sore everything except for what I was working, and Wolfe still wasn't complaining. Instead he spoke softly to me, using words in most of the six languages he speaks, including ones that I could guess were rough even when I couldn't tell for sure. They still sounded like the kind of phrases guys other than me murmur to their partners on dance floors when the music slows.

The taste of his skin, all sweat and dirt, was the only other thing I wanted, enough to fire my blood. The dark that surrounded us seemed to change every unseen sensation into something potent and strange. This was too good to last for long. I bit the collar of his jacket as I came. His breath was harsh and hot against my neck when he followed.

We had to bury one of our only two cotton handkerchiefs in the haystack when we were done cleaning up, which was annoying if back to normal. They couldn't be replaced this side of Italy.

While we were busy, the dark around us had shifted to gray. Just before I helped heave Wolfe into all that hay, I found his lips with my own. Even though the night had done nothing for his breath, I didn't care. I wanted one last warm touch from this Wolfe, the grubby, open Wolfe, before we both retreated behind the barriers we needed in a place where one wrong move could get us killed. Tomorrow, I'd find some way for us to wash. Wolfe would want the familiar chore.

When I was stowed in my own niche and nicely arranged, I called to Wolfe, "There's a faint pink glow on the east across the valley, ten miles away, above the Albanian Alps. Swell scenery."

"As much as I would miss your company, and even your irregular notions of bolstering morale, I would not miss your travelogue." Then there was silence.

This night's events would need some cuts before I submitted my manuscript to my editor, all right. I closed my eyes. Birds were singing. They could shut up any time now. Saying a silent good night and au revoir to my other Nero Wolfe, I went to sleep.


End file.
